Tainan used to be the capital of Taiwan a long time ago, so it has lots of old temples, as well as a remnant of a Dutch fort before the Chinese booted the Dutch out. We stayed at the Ta Lee Hotel which was being renovated, so we got a very nice room, good breakfast, free parking and loaner bikes for an unbeatable price.

good breakfast makes for a happy Jennifer, even had steamed buns :)

The loaner bikes turned out to be handy since driving and parking around Tainan for short distances just isn't worth it, but the distances were just a bit too long for walking.

We started with Chihkan Tower, which is more a house built on top of an old Dutch fort which was taken over by the Chinese when they were booting the Dutch out:

what it used to look like, obvious Dutch looking houses inside a fort, cute :)

Next, we went to see a lot of different temples, which Tainan is full of since it was the former capital. Many are old and some not very well maintained (I didn't take pictures of them), but they are all an important part of the history:

Buddhism is well spread in China, but the Chinese also have a lot of idol good like people they revere in temples and bring food to. In some temple, we saw over 30 of them, with a little kid giving some of his candy to each and every one of them. It must be expensive to be religious there :)

this kid had to give some of his candy to each idol

pig hearts, chicken, yummy looking shrimp, and more

some shrines had idols you made offerings to for love

Each little light (used to be candle, now LED), assigned to someone who paid to make a wish and has their name on it (I assume you pay for an amount of time and their your slot get recycled):

But you don't only buy your wishes and prayers with small lights, and various food offerings, you also buy paper money (yellow and red) in huge stacks and burn them to get your wishes to come true:

big wishes cost more money to burn :)

I should get into the paper selling business, it's good money :)

I just need to undercut the existing wishing paper money sellers ;)

did I say that big wishes cost more wishing money? :)

and then your burn it

big furnace to burn your wish money

And if you want to be really safe, you buy a light, offer paper money, and food, just to cover all the bases :)

You then finish your prayer with incense sticks and bowing to the idols:

We also went to check out the city's south wall:

The city also has a temple in Koxinga's honor, for booting the Dutch out of Taiwan. His son, the last of his dynasty that was losing against Ming Dynasty, eventually committed suicide when it was clear that his dynasty had lost and his reign was over. His 5 concubine also killed themselves to respect him, and the five concubine temple is there to honor that:

the 5 concubines

Koxinga

More temples, more idols:

After Tainan, we drove towards Anping by the coast, which is where the Dutch first arrived and built a fort of which there isn't much left but a few unearthed foundations. We started with a later fort built by the Golden Castle, a fort built later to protect against the Japanese:

Next, we went north a bit to see Matsu Temple:

Just next to it was Anping Fort aka Fort Zeelandia back when the Dutch built it:

not much left of the original fort

From there, we drove to PingTung to see Jennifer's family still in Taiwan and had dinner in a Japanese restaurant which was much more Chinese than Japanese, but tasty nonetheless:

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